This invention relates to an interconnection arrangement for distributing electrical signals.
In many types of electronic equipment, it is necessary to distribute electrical signals to numerous receiving devices mounted on respective receiving cards.
FIG. 1 illustrates four electrical signal sources 2, each providing a high frequency electrical signal having two distinct logic levels. FIG. 1 also illustrates multiple receiving devices 4 and an interconnection arrangement 6. The purpose of the interconnection arrangement 6 is to make each of the signals provided by the signal sources 2 available to each of the receiving devices 4. As shown in FIG. 1, this may be accomplished by use of signal buses which are connected to the outputs of the signal devices and are selectively tapped by the receiving devices.
If the signal buses are linear, the length of each signal bus will depend on the number of receiving devices, because each receiving device takes up a finite space and each additional receiving device requires an additional amount of bus length. Thus, as the number of receiving devices increases, the length of the signal buses increases. As the length of the buses increases, signal degradation by transmission over the buses may render the interconnection arrangement unsuitable for high frequency digital signals.